India ranks second in Facebook's $1M bug bounty

Summary:Asian giant is second on the list of countries that are recipients of Facebook's Bug Bounty Program, where the social network paid more than US$1 million to researchers who report security bugs.

"The countries with the fastest growing number of recipients are, in order, the U.S., India, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Germany, Pakistan, Egypt, Brazil, Sweden, and Russia," Collin Greene, security engineer at Facebook, said in the statement, adding that 329 people had been awarded a bounty so far.

Overall, the bug hunters spread across 51 countries, with 20 percent of the bounty paid so far awarded to U.S.-based recipients.

The social network said the program had been more successful than it anticipated, and paid out more than US$1 million in bounties and collaborated with researchers from all around the world to stamp out bugs in their products and infrastructure. "Our Bug Bounty program allows us to harness the talent and perspective of people from all kinds of backgrounds, from all around the world," Greene added.

Elly grew up on the adrenaline of crime fiction and it spurred her interest in cybercrime, privacy and the terror on the dark side of IT. At ZDNet Asia, she has made it her mission to warn readers of upcoming security threats, while also covering other tech issues.